The first annual Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference at GeorgeMason University will interrogate the politics of cultural programmingin public spaces.

Institutions within the conference purview include: museums, festivals,the performing arts, sporting events, multicultural and/or ethnicallyspecific celebrations, gigs and club nights, and tourist spectacles. Ofspecial interest is the menu of activities available in specificlocalities at any given moment: Of what is this menu comprised? To whomis it offered? And at what cost?

Questions to be considered may include but are not limited to:

* How is the knowledge of cultural programming produced in andthrough institutions? * How does cultural programming produce knowledge? * How do cultural institutions interpellate performative identitiesof race, class, gender and sexuality? * How do we understand labor in the context of cultural events? * What are the ideological stakes of cultural programming and whatis its political economy? * What kind of subject and desire does cultural programming produce?

Graduate students from relevant disiciplines are invited to submitabstracts of no more than 300 words addressing these and related topicsto Vicki Watts (vwatts_at_gmu.edu) by March 15th 2007. Please include yourinstitutional affiliation and any technical requirements.